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Expansion of bike lanes inspires some road rage

Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY
Published 10:47 p.m. CT July 15, 2014

Cities like Chicago for years have been touting bike lanes as a way to make themselves more livable and help the environment, but car-dependent Americans increasingly are chafing over growing bike friendliness.(Photo: Alyssa L. Schukar/USA Today)

CHICAGO – The problem for cyclist Gillian Wu started when she yelled at a gaggle of pedestrians lingering in the bike lane to get out of the way.

The group, which included a woman carrying a small child, responded with jeers. Wu, 21, a heavy user of this city’s extensive bike lane system, said she decided to stop anyway, hoping she could engage the group constructively.

Instead, one man in the group told her he hoped she’d get splattered by a semi, called her entitled and concluded “the world would be a better place without me and people like me,” Wu said.

Wu’s story went viral and spurred a sometimes vitriolic debate in which some motorists berated cyclists as thoughtless, spandex-clad elitists who pay no heed to traffic laws, while bikers noted that motorists are responsible for thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries annually as a result of unsafe driving.

The issue has become an emotional one as drivers are increasingly told they’ll have to share the road with bike riders, an adaptation that has been easier said than done for a car-obsessed country.

Pushing back

Last month, the City Council in Louisville, Kentucky, put a temporary stop on funding new bike lanes until Mayor Greg Fischer’s staff provides a report on bike network plans. Council members called on the mayor to report on the potential for taxing bicyclists through licensing fees.

There is growing opposition from business owners and residents in Chicago’s northwest corner over a plan to establish protected bike lanes — lanes shielded by poles and other barriers — in that area. One option under consideration would reduce four traffic lanes down to two for motorists on a busy two-mile stretch of road.

Businesses — and a Chicago police lieutenant running for City Council — launched a petition drive opposing the bike lane expansion and in a matter of days were able to gather 4,000 signatures from residents.

In Indianapolis, Mayor Greg Ballard’s goal of establishing 200 miles of trails and bike lanes has come under fire from motorists who prefer their roads bike-free and from council members who argue the money would be better spent fixing the city’s crumbling infrastructure.

The debate may have hit a new level of absurdity last week in the nation’s capital after Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy derided bike riders as bullies.

Perception problems

Milloy’s column spurred a protest on the newspaper’s headquarters by angry cyclists who took particular exception to a provocative line in it: “It’s a $500 fine for a motorist to hit a bicyclist in the District, but some behaviors are so egregious that some drivers might think it’s worth paying the fine.”

Shane Farthing, the executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, said one problem the cycling community struggles to overcome is the perception that bike lanes are established by cities catering to millennials and high-income whites.

U.S. census data show cycling to work is more popular with Americans in lower-income households than it is with the wealthy. A larger percentage of Hispanics and multiracial Americans bike to work than do whites and African-Americans, according to the data.

“In some cases, a bike has become a symbol for some folks of so many social, historical, racial, demographic and mobility issues that have been packed over so much time and space,” Farthing said.

RECENT STUDY

A study of five U.S. cities with extensive bike lane infrastructure published last month showed that 60 percent of respondents who lived near areas where bike lanes had been established said the changes in their neighborhood were positive for bicycling.

•Thirty-six percent said changes have been positive for walking, and 50 percent said changes for driving were negative.